Conventional wisdom suggests that the president’s standing with the public affects his success in Congress. Electoral self-interest is the primary reason to expect a relationship between presidential popularity and the behavior of members of Congress. Although numerous studies have analyzed the effects of presidential popularity, the lack of presidential approval data at the congressional const...

In their landmark work, Statehouse Democracy: Public Opinion and Policy in the American States, Erikson, Wright, and McIver (1993) study the effects of individual state partisanship and political ideology on state presidential voting. In general, they found that partisanship and ideology affected presidential voting independently of one another. In addition, from 1988 through 1992 (the last yea...

This paper examines the impact of the form of government—–presidential or parliamentary—–on fiscal outcomes in democratic systems. Based on data for democracies in 98 countries between 1970 and 2002, it shows that the gross domestic product ratio of the central government budget balance is higher in presidential than in parliamentary democracies. It also shows that this impact is not due to the...

What are the conditions that generate minority presidents and deadlock in presidential regimes? What is the impact of minority presidents and deadlock on the survival of these regimes? Based on data for all presidential and mixed democracies that existed between 1946 and 1996, I show (1) that characteristics of the electoral and party systems do affect the level of support for the president in ...

Contrary to previous empirical studies that find a linear link between economic conditions and presidential approval, this study argues for and finds a nonlinear relationship. A threshold regression is used to assess potential nonlinear relationships between macroeconomic variables and presidential popularity. A quarterly data analysis for the 1960Q1–2012Q2 time period reveals that domestic fac...